Notes and Editorial Reviews

Johann Simon Mayr was born not far from Ingolstadt. His initial music instruction was from his father who was an organist and schoolteacher. He completed further schooling at the Benedictine monastery in Weltenburg and in 1773 went to Ingolstadt on a scholarship to study at the Jesuit College. During this time he was also an organist in several churches. In 1787 he was summoned to Schloss Sandersdorf as a music teacher by Baron Thomas von Bassus. He then went to Venice where his opera career took off. Here he studied with Ferdinando Bertoni, the director of music at San Marco. In 1803 he was elected Maestro di Capella in Bergamo, a position he held until the end of his life. His output included around sixty operas, symphonies, chamber musicRead more and a few hundred musical works for the church. Simon Mayr was a contemporary of Haydn, Beethoven, and Rossini and was considered the father of the Italian opera. His most famous student was Gaetano Donizetti. Mayr's large-scale Missa in c minor was probably commissioned in May 1823 by Joseph Morel for the Primiz (in the Catholic church the first mass of a newly ordained priest) of his brother, Pater Gall Morel. Read less